Inter Press ServiceOriana Boselli - Author - Inter Press Service

GENDER/LANGUAGE: Rejecting the Derogatory ‘Feminine’

Oriana Boselli and Miren Gutierrez — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 12:29:00 +0000

Miren Gutierrez and Oriana Boselli

By Oriana Boselli and Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Dec 26 2009 (IPS)

What happens to language and the way women are addressed when they start to occupy positions of responsibility? Well, it depends on the language.

Is Spanish discriminatory?

"My conclusion is that it is so," says José Luis Aliaga Jiménez, professor in Linguistics of the Universidad de Zaragoza. "It is so in the conservative resistance for the formation of feminine nouns; in the rejection of masculine forms when men start doing jobs that were traditionally feminine, such as ‘azafato’ (hostess), ‘amo de casa’ (househusband) or ‘niñero’ (baby minder); and particularly, in the use of the masculine form as a generic."

On the masculine form as a generic, Aliaga Jiménez coincides with politician Luisa Capelli, but from a linguistic point of view. "My research has led me to believe that the supposedly generic character of the masculine when applied to mixed groups isn’t a linguistic quality at all, but a pragmatic interpretation that ends up in a discursive suppression of women and their achievements," he says.

"In the feminist theory and sociology," he adds, "it is notorious the attitude of women who, having reached an important public job, try to blend in the dominant group (of men), and deny the discrimination that goes on, including the linguist discrimination… It is usually accompanied by statements such as: ‘I have never felt discriminated against’, which are the toll some women believe have to be paid to be accepted in a masculinised public realm."

Spanish philosopher Amelia Valcarcel has described this as the "dynamic of the exception".

"It is in that context in which you can understand the preference for the masculine professional titles, which is found in the Spanish-speaking world, although to a lesser extent than in Italian or French," he concludes.

In Italian, most women prefer the masculine titles, because the feminine version (when it exists) is considered ludicrous, even derogatory.

In Spanish, a related language, this is different. So, is this a grammatical issue or a social one?

“The problem is not only Italian machoism, but the lack of awareness and directives as to how to address women correctly,” says Angelica Mucchi-Faina, psychology professor at the Perugia University.

“A language is the mirror of its society. Until a few decades, all positions of power or public responsibility were occupied exclusively by men. So those roles were defined ‘in masculine’,” says Mucchi-Faina.

Modern English lacks grammatical gender, whereas Indo-European languages, including Italian and Spanish, can distinguish between masculine and feminine.

“The linguistic discrimination against women is realised through multiple conduits,” says José Luis Aliaga Jiménez, professor in Linguistics of the Universidad de Zaragoza. “The configuration and functioning of grammatical gender in languages like Spanish and Italian is not the most important, but it is the one with deepest symbolic reach.”

When it comes to titles of importance, in Italian, you find yourself reading about “il ministro Mara Carfagna” – even if Carfagna, the minister of equality, is a woman. In contrast, in Spanish there is no option but ‘ministra’, ending in the feminine ‘a’.

Says Mucchi-Faina, “Most countries issued recommendations to avoid sexism when addressing women. Also in Italy, in 1986, the Presidency issued similar recommendations. But instead of being taken seriously and implemented, they were an object of jokes, and eventually forgotten.”

“Contrary to what has happened in other countries, in Italy there is no general rule and everyone can pick and choose whether to use neologisms like ‘ministra’ or the traditional ‘ministro’ for women,” says Mucchi-Faina.

Politician Luisa Capelli, from L’Italia dei valori party (The Italy of Values), thinks that “leaving behind the supposed universal neutrality of the masculine form is an essential passage so that the feminine experience gets respect.”

“It is not true that these feminine forms (for positions of power) do not exist in Italian: there are plenty of examples from feminists, linguists and semiologists who have made a number of proposals,” says Capelli. “You can say ‘avvocata’ (lawyer) and ‘ministra’, but nobody does. Although many of us use those words, we are ignored. To change the symbolic order is hard work that requires a consensus based on the profound convictions of people.”

Sexism in language was identified as a global problem during the first world conference on the status of women, celebrated in Mexico in 1975. Many proposals and directives followed. In 1989, UNESCO issued the booklet Guidelines on Non-Sexist Language, aiming at helping “authors and editors avoid writing in a manner that reinforces questionable attitudes and assumptions about people and sex roles.”

Since the ’80s, Spain and Italy have gone in different directions.

The 2002 ‘Non-Sexist Administrative Manual’, published by The Association of Women’s Historical Studies of the University of Malaga, Spain, summarises the common sentiment: “Languages evolve to respond to the necessities of the communities that use them. In a society like ours, where there is a demand for equality, language, as a social product, not only has to reflect equality, but it also has to promote it.”

However, while having popularised the feminine for titles of importance, Spanish has not eliminated discrimination in the language …

While in Italy ...

Actually, they are still debating whether the gender of titles is strictly a grammatical issue. But some disagree.

"Language is never neutral. A language represents the society that uses it. That means that a society that represents women in a discriminatory way is a society that justifies and shares such discrimination," says Irene Giacobbe of the association, Power Gender.

Like professor Angelica Mucchi-Faina of Perugia University, Giacobbe thinks that the issue of how to address women in positions of responsibility has already been settled in Italy, although only in theory.

However, "many women say that their titles sound badly in the feminine, they don't want to be an ‘avvocata’, although it is the correct form," she says. "What happens is that even observant media make mistakes calling them ‘avvocato’ or use the pejorative ‘avvocatessa’ and ‘presidentessa’ deliberately, because they cannot be so ignorant as to using a pejorative ending without realising it. And you end up in ‘humorous’ situations where you read ‘il ministro indossava una gonna vaporosa’ (the {male} minister wore a vaporous skirt)."

As in Spanish, in Italian the feminine ending ‘essa’ has pejorative connotations indicating a position of a lesser category or the wife of the real person in power.

"In the Italian Switzerland," she says, "there is a tragicomic difference in the use of news agencies. Even if ANSA (the state Italian agency) has guidelines to avoid sexism, most of its stories from Italy use the masculine form for women’s titles, while when it reports from Switzerland and Germany they use correctly ‘cancelliera’ (chancellor), ‘ministra’ and ‘avvocata’."

This apparently dull issue of feminine titles jumped to the front pages recently, when Bibiana Aido, Spain’s Minister of Equality, used the word ‘miembra’ (member) in public.

What’s the big deal? The word doesn’t exist. Yet.

“In most personal nouns,” says Aliaga Jiménez, there is a correlation between grammatical gender and the referential meaning of ‘sex’. It is a culturally significant correlation… All nouns referred to a person end up with a gender variation, sooner or later. And it is in that context that the words ‘miembra’, ‘testiga’ (witness) emerge, since, following the common rule in Spanish, the final ‘a’ is interpreted as belonging to the feminine.”

‘Testigo’ and ‘miembro’ are so far exceptions to the common rule and have no official feminine variation.

“The people who don’t know the history of language are the ones who get outraged by neologisms while accepting other words that caused scandal in the past,” says Aliaga Jiménez. “The idea that language only changes for the worse has no linguistic basis.”

According to Irene Giacobbe of the association, Power Gender, the difference with Spain is that “there has been a clear position and a positive reaction from (José Luis Rodríguez) Zapatero’s government.”

“But we are late in everything,” she says. “Italy modified family laws in the ’70s. The fascist law that considered rape a moral violation, and not a crime against a person, was changed only in 1996. This is a country in which the historic phobia against women has been masked with a great deal of care for the mother, and a lot is needed to dismantle it.”

What is needed, then?

“The problem is the scarcity of women in positions of power,” she adds. “This is the country with one of the lowest numbers of women managing companies and in Parliament… Girls and boys think they are equal while they remain in the school. They discover the difference when they enter the world of labour; girls find out that even when they graduated with the best scores in less time than their male colleagues, the system doesn’t reward them … All this has been studied and analysed. It remains to be part of the public debate.”

Excerpt:

Miren Gutierrez and Oriana Boselli

MEDIA: The Untold Stories of Violence Against Women

Miren Gutierrez and Oriana Boselli — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:48:00 +0000

Miren Gutierrez* and Oriana Boselli

By Miren Gutierrez and Oriana Boselli
ROME, Nov 26 2009 (IPS)

“You don’t need to go far, it is all around us,” said Robert Dijksterhuis, head of the gender division in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to a room mostly full of women. “Up to one in three women around the world has been abused in some way – most often by someone she knows,” he added, quoting UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) numbers.

Robert Dijksterhuis, Jac SM Kee, Monia Azzalini,Paula Fray, Thenjiwe Mtintso and Laila Al-Shaik. Credit: Miren Gutierrez/IPS

The audience, a group of committed women – and men -, had gathered in Rome to discuss this widespread emergency and the role media have in relation to it in a conference organised by the IPS news agency and supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the city of Rome.

The U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) reports in the paper “Violence against women worldwide” that up to 70 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime – the majority from husbands, partners or someone they know. Among women aged 15–44, acts of violence cause more death and disability than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.

And violence against women is pervasive.

In South Africa, a woman is killed every six hours by someone she knows; in Guatemala, two women are murdered, on average, each day. In São Paulo, Brazil, a woman is assaulted every 15 seconds. Rape of women is widespread in armed conflicts such as those of Colombia and Darfur, Sudan.

During the conference, IPS launched the handbook "Reporting Gender-Based Violence".

"Violence against women has presented particular challenges to the media and to society because of the way in which it has been consigned to the private sphere -dampening public discussions and stifling media debate. Yet, the media has the potential to play a lead role in changing perceptions that, in turn, can help galvanise a movement for change," says the introduction by IPS Africa Director Paula Fray.

The handbook deals with issues such as religious and harmful traditional practices, domestic violence, sexual gender-based violence, femicide, sex work and trafficking, sexual harassment, armed conflicts, HIV and AIDS, child abuse, the role of men, the criminal justice system, and the costs of gender-based violence, with real stories illustrating how these issues and trends can be tackled by the media, discussion points, fact checks and additional resources.

This phenomenon affects not only developing countries, but also the developed world. In the U.S., 83 percent of girls aged 12–16 experienced some form of sexual harassment in public schools, and one-third of women murdered each year are killed by partners; in the European Union between 40 and 50 percent of women experience unwanted sexual advancements, physical contact or other forms of sexual harassment at their workplace.

However, according to UNFPA, civil society, media and politicians have begun only recently to join their efforts to change the perception of the phenomenon of violence against women, trying to knock down the wall of indifference and misconstruction that has always surrounded it.

And this is where the media comes in.

According to the Italian Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Vincenzo Scotti, “communication can be one of the most powerful tools” in the fight against this type of violence.

In “Changing cultural and social norms that support violence”, the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirms that media – which have been successful in addressing a wide range of health issues – could play a bigger role in fighting violence.

Meanwhile papers like “The influence of media violence on youth”, published by the American Physiological Society, show how female victimisation in storylines reduces the perceptions of violence in the reality.

This problem is exacerbated by the under-representation of women in media and misrepresentation of their role. Media Monitoring Africa – a watchdog organisation that promotes fair journalism – denounces the scarcity of women working in the media and the marginalised way in which they are portrayed, often limited to victims or someone’s relative.

“The influence of women in journalism is one of the most central problem areas in feminist media research,” acknowledges a report entitled “The Gender of Journalism”, authored by Monika Djerf-Pierre.

Djerf-Pierre’s study shows that even in a female-friendly nation such as Sweden, “journalism as a field has remained male-dominated.” (Sweden ranks number four in the Global Gender Gap [GGG] published by the World Economic Forum.) Today, almost half of Swedish journalists are women, the study shows. However, three out of four leaders in the media industry are men. In other countries the situation is worse.

According to Dijksterhuis, some of the ways communication can be used in a changing landscape with new technologies are trying to set the agenda; forging stronger linkages with NGOs, media and other actors (an issue that was highlighted by many speakers in this conference); and monitoring the results, since “most information is biased towards men.”

Communications rights should be part of these efforts, said Jac SM Kee, coordinator of Women’s Rights Advocacy in the Association for Progressive Communications. Her organisation is involved in an effort to “reclaim ICTs” (Information Communication Technologies) to end violence and address the intersections between communication rights and women’s human rights, especially in relation to violence against women.

Meanwhile, Mona Azzalini, of the Global Media Monitoring Project in Italy, talked about the biggest global survey about women’s participation in the media, to be released in 2010.

The initiative “promotes a change in the way women are portrayed” and creates a “network of advocacy groups” fighting discrimination and stereotypes in the media. The last monitoring – done in 2005 – was focused on four issues: the representation of women as subjects of information, the journalists, the content of the news including cases of stereotypes and discrimination, and journalistic practices.

The results of the 2010 survey will be compared with the 2005 report, which showed that only 21 percent of the sources are women, and most experts quoted (83 percent) are men. The point of view of women is nowhere to be seen: in politics only 14 percent of the sources were women; while in economic issues, 20 percent were women. Even when the issue is violence against women, most of the voices (64 percent) are men’s.

And how do media talk about these issues?

“Victim means weakness; weakness means violence… Media love violence,” said Laila Al Shaikhli, anchorwoman of Al Jazeera, who spoke about the difficulty of getting the real story, when women are reluctant to speak out and carry on a social stigma, when they themselves participate in the cycle of discrimination, educating children with the same paradigms.

The result is that the image of women comes out distorted.

In Italy, for example, “80 percent of people form their opinions based on TV,” said Emma Bonino, vice president of the Italian Senate. “And I am not satisfied with how women’s images are transmitted in our media. It is a humiliating image… Working women do not exist. The role of media is an important part of whichever strategy you want in place when fighting against violence. It is not marginal or complementary, it is essential to forming the idea of women.”

In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi controls about 90 percent of the TV audience through his private media empire Mediaset and the state television RAI.

Thenjiwe Mtintso, South Africa’s ambassador to Italy, spoke from the point of view of a gender activist and a former journalist during apartheid about the definition of what is news and its ownership, and who transmits it. Not women, she said. And this is something that has to change if violence against women is to end.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief.